Free Library Podcast

Angela Saini is the author of Superior, an ''easy-to-read blend of science reporting, cultural criticism, and personal reflection'' (Slate) that explores the resurgence of the harmful and faulty study of race science. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed Inferior, a new portrait of women's minds, bodies, and evolutionary roles gained through an investigation of how science has failed to accurately understand them. Her print and television science journalism have appeared on the BBC, The Guardian, New Scientist, and Wired, among other places. In The Patriarchs, Saini investigates the surprising origins and history of gendered oppression, offers a historical examination of the brittle and constantly reasserted nature of patriarchy, and analyzes contemporary research and revolutionary efforts to combat these systems of control. (recorded 3/29/2023)

In conversation with Laura McGrath, Assistant Professor of English at Temple University

A ''soul-quaking'' (Los Angeles Review of Books) meditation on the everyday miracles we take for granted set amongst the travels and travails of a Shakespearean acting troupe in the years following a global plague, Emily St. John Mandel's bestselling Station 11 was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her other novels include Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Glass Hotel, included by Barack Obama on his 2022 summer reading list. Mandel is also a staff writer for art and culture magazine The Millions. Peripherally set in the same universe as Station 11 and The Glass Hotel, Sea of Tranquility follows interconnected time-hopping characters seeking love and metaphysical truth in such far-flung locales as the wilderness of 19th century British Columbia and the domed cities of the 25th century lunar surface. (recorded 3/28/2023)

In conversation with award-winning chef and restauranteur Michael Solomonov

Ari Shapiro is the cohost of NPR's All Things Considered, the most listened-to radio news program in the country. Formerly NPR's White House correspondent and international correspondent based in London, he has earned two Edward R. Murrow awards, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, and recognition from the American Bar Association and the Columbia Journalism Review. Also an accomplished stage performer, Shapiro is the creator of the one-man show Homeward and the co-creator of the show Och and Oy, which he performs nationwide alongside collaborator Alan Cumming. A memoir in the form of an essay collection, The Best Strangers in the World reveals the deeper stories behind some of the globe-hopping journalist's most poignant reportage. (recorded 3/23/2023)

In conversation with Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. 

Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture

A professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for more than 40 years, Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., is one of the United States' foremost experts on the treatment of post-traumatic stress and incest. ''One of the most important psychiatry works to be published since Freud'' (The New York Times), her groundbreaking 1992 book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror redefined medicine's understanding of trauma survivors. Herman is the director of training at the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a founding member of the Women's Mental Health Collective. Her many honors include the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the 2000 American Medical Women's Association Award, and in 2003 the American Psychiatric Association bestowed upon her the title of Distinguished Life Fellow. A manifesto for a new framework of justice, Truth and Repair argues that survivors' voices should be central elements in our criminal justice system. 

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller The Body Keeps the Score, a watershed examination of the ways traumatic stress affects the physical health of human beings. The founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, he is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and is the director of the National Complex Trauma Treatment Network. (recorded 3/22/2023)

Featuring magician, Justin Gilmore

A staff writer at The New Yorker for more than three decades, Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon, The Table Comes First, At the Strangers' Gate, and A Thousand Small Sanities, a ''witty, humane, learned'' (The New York Times) defense of liberalism amidst the dogmatic divisions of our time. He is also a sought-after public speaker, widely anthologized essayist, and has collaborated as both a librettist and lyric writer on several musical projects. A three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award and a winner of the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, Gopnik was decorated with the French Republic's medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. An examination of the fundamental question of just how it is that we acquire skills, The Real Work delves into the processes used by a variety of master artists, professionals, and instructors.  (recorded 3/21/2023)

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition

The former longtime CEO of Black Entertainment Television (BET), Debra Lee currently serves on the boards of several of the world's leading corporations, including Proctor & Gamble, Warner Bros. Discovery, Revlon, Burberry Group Plc, and Marriott International. She is the founder and chairwoman of Leading Women Defined Foundation, an organization of Black female thought leaders, and is the co-founder of Monarchs Collective, a group that empowers men and women of color to sit on corporate boards. One of the Hollywood Reporter's 100 Most Powerful Women in Entertainment and Billboard's Power 100, Lee is an inductee into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. I Am Debra Lee charts her journey from girlhood in the segregated South to heading the first Black company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, along the way offering personal anecdotes, celebrity stories, and lessons about motherhood while trying to make a career. (recorded 3/9/2023)

Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture

In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak

The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee's 2021 odyssey across the American landscape of inequality, won wide acclaim for its empathetic and incisive imagining of a future that could offer more than our current racial paradigm. A New York Times bestseller, longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the best books of the year by numerous media outlets, it was recently adapted as a podcast on the Obama's Higher Ground network. One of the nation's foremost experts in economic and social policy, McGhee is the chair of the board of directors at Color of Change, the United States' largest online racial justice group. She is also the former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos, where she currently serves as a distinguished senior fellow. (recorded 3/7/2023)

In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill

British American journalist Mehdi Hasan hosts the eponymously titled The Mehdi Hasan Show, a news and politics program that airs on MSNBC and NBC's streaming channel Peacock. He is also the fill-in host for The Rachel Maddow Show, All in with Chris Hayes, and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, among other programs. A former presenter on Al Jazeera English, a former columnist and podcaster for The Intercept, and former political director of the UK edition of The Huffington Post, he has published opinion pieces in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. In Win Every Argument, Hasan not only presents a practical guide to the art of rhetoric, he shares a philosophical claim for good-faith argument's value to democracy and truth.

The Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions at Temple University, Marc Lamont Hill is the host of BET News and the Coffee and Books podcast. The recipient of honors from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, he is the author of six books, including Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. (recorded 3/2/2023)

In conversation with Sharon G. Flake

Camonghne Felix is the author of Build Yourself a Boat, ''an exquisite and thoughtful'' (Bustle) poetry collection that was longlisted for the National Book Award in poetry and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, among other honors. A contributing writer at The Cut, her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in numerous places, including The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and Harvard Review. In Dyscalculia, Felix uses her childhood learning disorder that caused difficulties with math to explore the trauma of a monumental breakup, past troubles, and the concepts of self-love and acceptance.

Acclaimed as a modern classic for middle and high school students, Sharon G. Flake's 1998 debut novel The Skin I'm In depicts the travails of a seventh grader dealing with self-esteem issues connected with race, economics, and academic success. It has been translated into several languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Flake is also the author of a dozen other books of fiction, short stories, and poems, including Money Hungry, You Don't Even Know Me, and The Life I'm In, a companion piece to The Skin I'm In published in 2021. Her many honors include two Coretta Scott King Awards, the John Steptoe Award for New Talent, and the YWCA Racial Justice Award. (recorded 3/1/2023)

Veteran United States Secret Service Officer Leth Oun has protected presidents and vice presidents in four administrations in almost every state and more than a dozen countries. A political refugee who survived the genocidal Killing Fields of Cambodia, he arrived in America in 1983, became a citizen in 1990, earned a college degree from Widener University in 1998, and went to work for the federal government in 2000. 

Joe Samuel Starnes three celebrated novels include Calling, Red Dirt, and Fall Line, which was named to The Atlanta Journal Constitution's 2011 ''Best of the South'' list. All of these works are featured in an essay in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives. His articles have appeared in several periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and his essays, short stories, and poems have been published in numerous literary journals.

A Refugee's American Dream recounts Oun's father's execution by the brutal Khmer Rouge, his almost four years of enslavement in the Killing Fields followed by more than three years in refugee camps, his arrival in America as a penniless 17-year-old, and his transcendent journey to the Secret Service that culminates with his return to Cambodia as part of President Obama's protection detail.  (recorded 2/28/2023)